07/29/2026
Super letter in post below - please read and share.
We greatly appreciate the following letter by Cathy Orlando, published today on Sudbury .com.
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The Canadian and Ontario governments are betting our future on a nuclear renaissance, but the stakes could not be higher.
As a Sudbury resident who attended the first consultation on Canada’s Deep Geological Repository (DGR) for nuclear waste in mid-May 2010 and has followed the issue ever since, I urge all Ontarians, including our MPs and MPPs, to pay close attention to what the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has planned for our province.
The people of Northern Ontario — and the generations who will call this land home long after we are gone — deserve better than the risks this project poses.
Thanks to Sudbury .com’s excellent coverage, we now know a critical detail that the NWMO has not widely publicized: After just 160 years, the deep geological repository will be decommissioned, and the NWMO will submit an Abandonment License application, meaning the site will no longer be actively monitored or maintained.
This raises profound ethical questions about intergenerational responsibility. How can we justify leaving future generations with the burden of ensuring the safety of a site we will have abandoned?
The NWMO claims it has secured "informed consent" for the world’s first DGR in northwestern Ontario. But let’s be clear: this is not informed consent. The process has been deeply flawed.
The proposed site is 40 kilometres outside Ignace’s municipal borders, yet the NWMO polled Ignace residents using leading questions and prize incentives to gauge "willingness."
Meanwhile, downstream communities like Dryden, Kenora and many Treaty 3 nations — who face the greatest risk of water contamination — have had no meaningful say in this decision.
On May 4, the day I attended a We the Nuclear Free North workshop, a transport truck rolled over on Highway 69 just three kilometres from my home. This incident is a stark reminder of the dangers ahead.
Once operations begin in the 2040s, 700 shipments of nuclear waste will travel annually for 50 years — roughly two truck shipments per day — totalling 50,000 radioactive waste shipments over the lifetime of the project. These shipments will traverse Highways 17, 400, and 69, passing through communities like Sudbury, which were initially excluded from the federal impact assessment process.
Thankfully, the federal government recently acknowledged that "project-related transportation has the potential to result in adverse effects within areas of federal jurisdiction." This decision came after public pressure, including my own submission, demanded that the risks to millions of Canadians along these routes be addressed.
At the We the Nuclear Free North workshop, I learned that the Canadian Shield’s fractured rock poses a significant geological risk, potentially allowing groundwater to leak radionuclides into the environment. Safer alternatives, such as sedimentary rock closer to the nuclear reactors, must be reconsidered. After attending the workshop, I made a submission to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (Project #88774), which included:
• Transportation Risks: Demands for a comprehensive risk assessment of transporting nuclear waste from Southern to Northwestern Ontario, including Indigenous and community consent.
• Renewable Energy Integration: Requests for clarity on how renewable energy (solar, wind, offshore wind, batteries) could be used at the DGR site to mitigate nuclear waste production.
• AI and Global Collaboration: Concerns about the lack of explicit mention of AI in monitoring and the need for greater transparency on global best practices.
• Biological Monitoring: Requests for detailed protocols to monitor extremophiles (fungi, bacteria) in high-radiation environments.
• Extremophile Research: Advocacy for funding research into extremophile-based nuclear waste breakdown as a nuclear waste management measure.
• Geological Comparison: A request for a detailed comparison of the risks between the Canadian Shield and sedimentary rock sites.
My full submission was grounded in scientific research. I am grateful to live in a country where our voices can be heard. I am over the moon that the transportation concerns are now being addressed by the federal government.
The DGR project is a multi-generational decision with implications for environmental safety, Indigenous rights, and Canada’s energy future. It is unconscionable that we would gamble with the safety of Northern Ontario communities, now and in the future, for the sake of national interests driven by temporary pressures south of our border today.
We deserve better. We deserve a process that prioritizes safety, transparency, and true informed consent. We deserve a future where future generations are not left to clean up the mess of our short-sighted decisions.
The time to act is now. Let’s demand accountability so that future generations remember us as good ancestors.
Cathy Orlando
Greater Sudbury
